Am I really who I think I am?

While teaching at Hesston College, Kansas, a group of us formed a small group that met weekly. Most in the group spoke Spanish except for one friend. Once at a meeting we were jovially interacting in Spanish while my friend was a passive observer. After the meeting he told me: “you are a different person when you speak Spanish.” This was my first realization that this was probably true and it has made me think about how learning other languages has affected me as well. Am I really who I think I am? How am I different when I speak Spanish, or Swiss German? When a walk in and out of these language-induced personalities (personas?) which is the real me?

I became friends with a couple who were children of missionaries in Italy. He was from the USA and her heritage was Swiss. When I saw their wedding pictures, I viewed her as a sophisticated model and when she spoke Italian it in no way took away the image I had of her. When she spoke Bärndütsch (Bernese Swiss German) with us, she was suddenly transformed into a common, ordinary country girl. Who is she? A beautiful and sophisticated Italian model, or a simple country girl? Perhaps she is both. Perhaps it depends on which language she is speaking at the time.

Psycholinguistics is a field which looks at how language affects behavior and culture and how culture affects language. One can say that it is like the question, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" I have reflected a lot on certain usages in languages that influence how one behaves. When I learn and use these usages, have I changed who I am?

For example, in Spanish, whose speakers notably belong to a face-saving culture, they have a linguistic construction which reflects this reality. Instead of saying, “I dropped the ball,” they say, “The ball dropped itself on me.” In the English version, the subject, “I” takes full responsibility for dropping the ball. However, in Spanish, the subject is the ball, as if the ball was to be blamed for having been dropped. I am only indirectly involved, as an indirect object. Couldn’t one surmise that that is a face saving mechanism? When I use this expression which is grammatically called the “accidental reflexive” and many others like it, have I become part of the face-saving culture? 

In another example, in Swiss German, there is no simple past tense, normally called the preterite. To express time in the past, they use either the present perfect or the pluperfect. For example, we would say, “I took three pills.” They would say, “I have taken three pills.” The preterite tells us in English, that the action is over and done. The present perfect, on the other hand, tells us that the action in the past continues to influence the present moment. Our sentence in English isn’t complete until it tells us how it affects us in the present. “I have taken three pills” implies as of yet, up to now. I might take more. 

How might the use of the present perfect for reporting events in the past influence how speakers view past events? Does it mean that for them, things that happened in the past always continue to influence the present? That nothing is ever over and done? 

The Swiss German dialect also does not have a future tense. Adverbs of time are used with the present tense to show that something will take place in the future. In contrast, English has two forms for the present: "I will go to church tomorrow" and "I am going to church tomorrow." Spanish uses both futute forms and in addition, like Swiss German, frequently uses the present tense to speak about something in the future. For example,  both Swiss German and Spanish can say "I eat in a restaurant tomorrow" while that sounds very strange to an English speaker.

For the most part, English is very precise with its tense usage, but lacks the nuance and ambiguity of the subjunctive moods where Spanish excels. 

I have only given a few examples of how different languages influence thought, and by extension the cultures within which they are spoken. Since people have observed me  being different when I speak with Swiss German speakers and Spanish speakers compared to when I speak English, has my mode of thinking changed as well? Am I three separate personalities? Am I who I really think I am? 

I don't think I have split personalities. I believe I have been able to integrate the various modes of thought into one personality and that allows me more flexibility and openness in my thought processes. So it is with others who have learned to speak more than one language. 

 Other posts on language learning:

 Learning Language a Spiritual Discipline

 Technically Speaking . . . Motivation

 Confessions of a Polyglot